Vent. Moms rug and drug container

 Out with the old.

2006-2023 

My mother bought me this rug while out of her mind on Drugs. We went to the Scandinavian furniture store on Thousand Oaks boulevard. Her minivan was tilted taking up two spaces. Before exiting the front seat with a heavy purse loud with shaking pill bottles she said one of her favorite things “the squeaky wheel gets the oil” 

I knew I was in for it when she said that. It was like a cue. We were in the empty store (or I hoped) as She started yelling at me, saying I was gay with gay style and demanding sale prices that didn’t exsist. I felt guilty for her and embarrassed. Are Levi’s and clogs really that gay? She knew about Rachel. One more thing to pick at me for… No bathroom to escape to. She started to imagine scenarios where our house would have great furniture and look like a showroom. She’d just covered our house in industrial navy blue airport carpeting that week. The whole house. She put a giant roll of Astro turf next to my bed “for the ceiling of your bedroom! you can hot glue fake gerber daisies from Micheals!!” That would be so cute and cool!” I wasnt enthusiastic, just wanted to do well in school. 

I fantasized about what she’d say as being true. In her shopping mode buying furniture. “Fir your apartment! Sarah!” “You love black and white!“ 

My independence and education in ceramics was the only thing I wanted. Another distraction away from that and I’d vomit.

 It was one of the worst weeks of my life, the second semester of freshman year. She’d just taken me & Chris’s mother to IKEA days after buying this rug. It was black & white, so she decided it would be the best idea ever to buy half the stores stock of black & white pillows, blankets and decorative ware.

(7 Couch pillows with build in slipper socks.)

She had a see through plastic pill case / makeup case with her full of powdery crushed… morphine, Attivan, speed and there was always something in her lipstick tube to snort in the IKEA bathroom. It made her behavior awful. I remember praying to  angels. “Please don’t be tacky. Be cool.”

Shame.

I wanted to run & hide always. Chris’s mother was/ is a Lutheran Christian minister! We fed the homeless together and it was considered outrageous that she wore sandals and drank coffee. Her family was so nice and normal I thought. What do they think of me? I wanted to fit in a normal family. Would they adopt me? 

I’m so different in every way. And my mom is most likely crazy from drug addiction. What to do? How 

Will it not take over our lives? Her behavior? Can we

Be usual 90’s 2000’s kids? I tried my best and we felt normal Most of the time with video games and velveta. Rock music. Chris Farley movies. School. Hebrew school. Homework tutoring. Me & my brother We had each other. I’m still grateful.

I developed an insulating imagination in Thousand Oaks.

In the weeks that followed after mom bought this rug and ugly pillows at ikea. She was arrested for driving our minivan into a light pole and shopping cart rack at Home Depot.

Belligerent intoxicated behavior. She was in prison for a week.

I waited in the backseat with my brother while cops came. I called for family to help come get us “what was I to say?” There was so much shame. I wonder why now I couldn’t be honest. 

“There’s been an accident, would you come pick me & Jamie up at target? Cops drove us to Target… I stood far away as to not be noticeably standing by cops & waved at them as we drove away.

I remember thinking “ouf! Well that’s over with!”

But it wasn’t.

I used to hide to be away to feel my emotions in private during this time. I felt I had to be mature & strong for my younger brother, moms friends, people in my life, professors. Etc. 

(*I was a kid in college still pulling A’s. Deciding what I wanted to be when I grew up. But. Every week that year mom kept getting worse until she died in 2008.)

After prison time she was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance while making Shabbat dinner because she had a seizure before another OD/ withdrawal. She was cutting onions and started to seize.

 In 2006 I called ambulance police on my mom 4 times. On the first ambulance call she was listening to Shiharizade naked with her legs covered in olive oil and plastic wrap. She was seen running down the street naked in oily plastic wrap and cowboy boots. Kids from my brothers school and my college had seen and picked on me about it. They thought it was hilarious but 

I felt so…unusual.

I came home from a day at college to find her drinking comet cleanser and orange juice. I called 911 again.

I used to pace around d the mall and have full day/ night classes to not be home. One day She was cooking onions and Cheetos in a pot. I asked her what she was doing and she snarled “WHAT TO DO THINK??  I’m hungry!” She beat me in my bedroom calling me a bitch that day “you better not go anywhere bitch” “you’re nothing but a worthless bitch”

Chris’s minivan pulled up half an hour later with his sweet Midwestern Christian grandparents to take us out to Chinese food. At the restaurant I shrunk below the toilet and balled my eyes out. I wouldn’t say anything.

Why was this happening? 

For a few days there was rest then on a night when nothing would soothe her She threw the cd player playing sheherizade at my brothers head. I got pants on her eventually… then She came downstairs wearing a grey parka. In the hallway she revealed to me that it was full of knives. It was.

Ginsu meat knives from as seen on TV adds in the 80’s. Big cooking knives too. Just knives. 

“If you don’t behave exactly how I want from you you will be very very sorry” “Have YOU? Ever looked down the barrel of a gun??!” “Why don’t you do the dishes NOW!”

I locked me & my brother in the bathroom and called an ambulance/ police. 

I stayed calm and held my brothers hand. This is what’s happening, Mom is sick because she’s on pills. She’s not okay but we’ll be okay. I’m going to take care of you I promise. We were behind a sliding glass shower door. Sitting in the tub.

I said to the police 

“My mother is wanting to kill us with knives hidden in her clothing.” “I need mental health ambulance aid” We were in the bathtub behind a shower door. Mom was sticking knives under the locked bathroom door. The bathroom had a back door that led to the garage. Cops came through there. They kept me talking and showed up taking us outside.

White coats, thank god. 

They took my mother in an ambulance to Northridge mental hospital. I visited her. It was awful spoon feeding her ice cream.

She was restrained, on heavy sedatives, drooling and shitting/ pissing on a pad. 

She was running naked through the mental ward/unit gouging her left butt cheek with something sharp and yelling.

Then. 

Step dad showed me a folder in this time that said “leaving” it was full of apartments in Ventura. 

“You’ll stay here to take care of mom & your brother”

But I was in college. No. She needs an in home nurse and I’m moving to Pasadena. You’ll stay here to care for your son and your wife. I’m the one who’s leaving to a cute apartment as a 20 yr old girl should have. I’m going to be a potter. 

I moved to my aunt Sue’s house June 11th 2006 that summer. A nurse was watching mom.

Mom bought me a wheel and a pair of hiking boots after her medication started working. The brand of hiking boots that Peter voulkos loved (a famous potter she studied with) 

I had nightmares of her yelling at me. Ptsd stuff in San Diego. Tge transition place was between Pasadena and San Diego that summer. I couldn’t eat or look T shrimp bacon or onions for years afterward because of her bizzare cooking. 

When visiting I’d flee the house w/ my flip phone to hide in bushes to call Chris who was at occidental college.

In an hour he’d pull up to get me. Take me to his house

To his parents. I’d stay there on a futon. No one would say anything but they knew.

I stayed with him at oxy for weeks & days  to survive. 

My apartment in Pasadena was such a blessing. As a naive girl I thought that would be the end of my suffering/ being away. But it wasn’t.

Mom was hospitalized so much until 2008. I was in Pasadena. 

I was so shell shocked. 

Anyway, I’ve had this rug in every home I e lived in since and it needs to fucking go.

Out with the old. In with the new happy life in Pasadena again. Free and happy. I was in therapy for 15 years every week to make sure my mind is sound. 

For Ray and my family. Fir me. 

BYE rug.

Love, me